Saying that urging impeachment is a “rightful course for an American patriot” to endorse, George McGovern, now 85 years old, the Democratic presidential candidate who lost to Richard Nixon in 1972, is calling for the impeachment of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.
In a Washington Post article, McGovern says, “Bush and Cheney are clearly guilty of numerous impeachable offenses. They have repeatedly violated the Constitution. They have transgressed national and international law. They have lied to the American people time after time. Their conduct and their barbaric policies have reduced our beloved country to a historic low in the eyes of people around the world. These are truly ‘high crimes and misdemeanors,’ to use the constitutional standard.” Excerpts from the article:
- In a more fundamental sense, American democracy has been derailed throughout the Bush-Cheney regime. The dominant commitment of the administration has been a murderous, illegal, nonsensical war against Iraq. That irresponsible venture has killed almost 4,000 Americans, left many times that number mentally or physically crippled, claimed the lives of an estimated 600,000 Iraqis (according to a careful October 2006 study from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health) and laid waste their country. The financial cost to the United States is now $250 million a day and is expected to exceed a total of $1 trillion, most of which we have borrowed from the Chinese and others as our national debt has now climbed above $9 trillion — by far the highest in our national history.
- All of this has been done without the declaration of war from Congress that the Constitution clearly requires, in defiance of the U.N. Charter and in violation of international law. This reckless disregard for life and property, as well as constitutional law, has been accompanied by the abuse of prisoners, including systematic torture, in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions of 1949.
- I have not been heavily involved in singing the praises of the Nixon administration. But the case for impeaching Bush and Cheney is far stronger than was the case against Nixon and Vice President Spiro T. Agnew after the 1972 election.
- How could a once-admired, great nation fall into such a quagmire of killing, immorality and lawlessness? It happened in part because the Bush-Cheney team repeatedly deceived Congress, the press and the public into believing that Saddam Hussein had nuclear arms and other horrifying banned weapons that were an “imminent threat” to the United States. The administration also led the public to believe that Iraq was involved in the 9/11 attacks — another blatant falsehood. Many times in recent years, I have recalled Jefferson’s observation: “Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.”
- Another shocking perversion has been the shipping of prisoners scooped off the streets of Afghanistan to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and other countries without benefit of our time-tested laws of habeas corpus.
- Ironically, while Bush and Cheney made counterterrorism the battle cry of their administration, their policies — especially the war in Iraq — have increased the terrorist threat and reduced the security of the United States.
- Today, after five years of clumsy, mistaken policies and U.S. military occupation, Iraq has become a breeding ground of terrorism and bloody civil strife. It is no secret that former president Bush, his secretary of state, James A. Baker III, and his national security adviser, Gen. Brent Scowcroft, all opposed the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq.
- Impeachment is unlikely, of course. But we must still urge Congress to act. Impeachment, quite simply, is the procedure written into the Constitution to deal with presidents who violate the Constitution and the laws of the land. It is also a way to signal to the American people and the world that some of us feel strongly enough about the present drift of our country to support the impeachment of the false prophets who have led us astray. This, I believe, is the rightful course for an American patriot.
- I believe we have a chance to heal the wounds the nation has suffered in the opening decade of the 21st century. This recovery may take a generation and will depend on the election of a series of rational presidents and Congresses. At age 85, I won’t be around to witness the completion of the difficult rebuilding of our sorely damaged country, but I’d like to hold on long enough to see the healing begin.
From The Washington Post, “Why I Believe Bush Must Go,” written by George McGovern
God bless him, he can’t even blame senility; 35 years later and he’s nuttier than ever.
The gentleman from Texas and his buddy who are both deeply mired in the oil industry, have and still are taking this country to the cleaners. Before it is all said
and done, there will not be a middle class in this country. Gas prices will continue
to go up until no one can afford it. Then the oil industry will take over. They will bankrupt this country, and then it will be theirs. The people will starve because the farmers can’t afford to farm, truckers can’t afford to haul. This country will be slave labor to the oil industry. Even if they put an engine in a car that could run
without gas it wouldn’t be affordable to the general puplic, and the auto industry
couldn’t produce enough to replace everything that runs on gas. Tractors,
combines, planters, trucks, not mention millions of cars. They have been pumping crude out of those holes for a long time and i’ll bet they are getting close to the bottom. When gas gets high enough the middle class will become
the lower class. Once that happens, well I don’t own an oil well so i’ll just be one
of the millions of have nots. It’s our children and grandchildren that will have
to live with it. I really don’t think that we can stop it now even if we wanted to.
This administration has been pushing us down this path for nearly 8 years
and everything else has just been a smoke screen. Bob Nichols
Joe C., if you have any evidence to back up your ad hominem, I’ll be eager to read it.
As for impeachment, of course Bush/Cheney have committed impeachable offenses. At this point, it does us less good to pursue impeachment than it does to let the corrupt and imcompetent serve out their terms for 9 more months and then let history judge them (doubtless as the worst administration ever to hold office in this great nation). Congress instead ought to focus on sending more commonsense legislation to the White House–like the anti-torture bill that Bush just vetoed. Let the representatives keep promoting liberties; eventually Bushco will slip and let a few new progressive laws get through–or at minimum, the Machivellian and the stooge will be out of office in January and the next administration (be it McCain, Clinton or Obama) will be burdened with cleaning up the dismal mess.
President Bush’s veto of the bill limiting torture made me wonder about the usual rule that we don’t impeach Presidents as a political vote of no confidence. You don’t want an American president to veto a bill against torture. One who does and who puts America on the map as a country who tortures is really a criminal under international law, and criminals can be impeached. It would be easier if Congress would just override the veto, but the Republicans held party lines to support Bush. Republicans are used to sticking together and I guess they know their best shot to hold the White House with McCain is to stick by Bush, at least on these signature issues like the violent response to 9/11. Republicans generally believe in the idea of Bush although perhaps not so much the execution. And of course they will be running against a very nontraditional candidate, either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, so they can’t help but feel they have a good shot. Besides few incumbent Congresspeople lose their seats, only 6% in the supposedly change oriented 2006 election.The idea of torturing 9/11 perpetrators has a great emotional appeal, making the TV show “24” immensely popular. However torture is bad stuff for victim and torturer alike, and you would think that any Senator or Congressman would be ashamed to vote in favor of it. That has not yet been the case however. Perhaps if the American people were ashamed to vote for someone who supported torture, the the Congress would follow.
Stan, you mentioned “like the violent response to 9/11.” What happened on 9/11 was an act of war by Al Queda and the government of Afghanistan which supported it. What do you think the response of the United States should have been?
Well, if 9/11 was an “act of war” then was the bombing of the Mura Federal Building in Omaha City also an act of war?
In both cases, the act was perpetrated by a few radicals. These perps operated without the direction or direct support of any government, AFAWK; their sources of support came from loosely organized extremist movements (one domestic, the other foreign). Both were follow-up attacks on our society by groups that had attacked us previously, both were motivated by perceived wrongs against those groups by the USA in the past.
What should our response have been? When Mullah Omar said “show us evidence that Osama bin Laden was responsible and we’ll turn him over” then we should have called his bluff and gone to the U.N. with the evidence. Then when he renegged (as I suspect he’d have done), we should have done exactly what we started to do in Afghanistan–except with proper troop levels and follow-up that would have netted Osama promptly.
I’ll point out that it was not possible to torture any of the perps of 9/11, considering that they all perished in the act. And that the Bush claim that torturing detainees has led to intelligence that foiled further terrorists attacks is dubious, considering how Bush has been proven to have misrepresented intel findings in the past. There’s also the fact that we don’t know if more humane methods of interrogation might have netted the same, or even better, intel–tho’ probably it would have, if we accept the claims of most interrogation experts that torture is a less reliable method.
No, Rick, the US response to 9/11 was not measured nor intelligent. It most closely resembles that of a guy who gets knocked down in a bar fight and jumps up and starts punching not the one who hit him, but anyone within reach. Our anti-terrorism efforts have been largely misdirected, laughable, and in some cases self-defeating. We’ve spent ourselves halfway to bankrupcy in Iraq for no practical gain, we’ve cost our citizens tmore than he equivalent of the carnage of 9/11 in time stolen from their lives for useless transportation security screenings, and we’ve allowed depravities like water-boarding the privilege of being debated as though they’re reasonable. It’s rather sad to see this once-proud nation now falling so far from its former position of leadership and moral authority, but here we are.
There’s no question that Bush and Cheney have misled us. The only question is whether it’s worth it to take the time and spend the money to remove them at this late date. Keeping in mind that impeachment wouldn’t disqualify them from their generous retirement benefits, I’d say there’s no benefit. You can have your symbolic value, I’d prefer to stay closer to a balanced federal budget.
OK T.Ruddick, what should our response to 9/11 have been? The Taliban, a radical Islamofascist organization, was the government of Afghanistan. It allowed Al Queda to operate in Afghanistan. The difference between Oklahoma City and 9/11 is that the attackers of 9/11 were operating in a country that allowed them to operate. It’s my understanding that there was a lot of cooperation between Al Queda and the Taliban.
Whether there was cooperation between the Taliban and Al Qaeda is moot; there was cooperation between the USA and Al Qaeda in the 1980s. What matters is whether the USA exhausted all diplomatic options before invading a sovereign nation–even one as depraved as Afghanistan under the Taliban.
And on that issue, the USA did not even try diplomacy. We accuse, and Mullah Omar (depraved cretin tho’ he was) asks for evidence. We ought to come forth with the evidence–what are we, the Queen of Romania? Rule of law revolves on evidence, not coercion.
The action against Iraq, of course, has no basis even distantly related to anti-terrorism. Removing strongman Saddam has given aid and comfort to the terrorists, much to our dismay.
I think I was quite clear that my course, if I were president, would have been to remove all doubt about Mullah Omar’s intentions by calling his bluff. If then he put cards (e.g., Osama) on the table, then we take our winnings and stay home. If he welches, then we rain sufficient hot flaming death upon him and his that there’s no chance of Taliban reclaiming 70% of Afghanistan (as they now have done, did you hear?) or of Osama evading our attentions for very long.
You got a plan that, in your opinion, would better maintain U.S. standing in world opinion while keeping our focus and yielding the prime objective of our military incursions? I’d like to hear it. Otherwise, I presume you’re adhering to the failed policies of a foolish Bush administration.
Ruddick’s analysis seems pretty sound. Whether or not such a thing as a just war is possible, a military strike to overthrow the Taliban and whatever al Qaeda people could be found makes some sense. However the window of opportunity in a place like Afghanistan, which has survived invaders since at least the Charge of the Light Brigade, is fairly small. Bush I and Cheney had it right in iraq after the Gulf War. An invasion of Afghanistan should have been followed by some international investment to rebuild and modernize the country, and perhaps get its economy from being hooked on heroin production. That was talked about but never happened.
The invasion of Iraq was obviously a disasterous mistake. Rather than Ruddick’s bar room brawl, the analogy that appeals to me is in the scene in the Untouchables movie where Al Capone learns that one of his underlings has done something behind his back, so he takes a baseball bat and beats a guy to death (is it even the same guy? I’m not sure that we know) while all the other underlings are watching. Capone shows that even though he has been wounded he is still the most violent thug in the mob. Iraq may have been surrogate for Saudi Arabia which produced and funded the most terrorists, but which the US was not in a position to attack directly. Both bin Ladin and Saddam Hussein were former underlings of the US and as they were getting uppity the US needed to take them down, while creating the future bin Ladins and Saddams that would need to be taken down in the future. This is what happens when you rely on brute power and violence.
Anyway people who rely on violence, whether they are Hitler or Stalin or Saddam, generate resistance and will eventually be overthrown. The US is headed the same way. A terrorized state becomes a terrorist state. European colonialists, who created countries like Iraq and Afghanistan dividing up and combining various ethnicities in the hope of conquering, were unable to rule the Middle East. The US may try to occupy Iraq for a hundred years, but it will do so, if at all, at enormous cost, somewhere around $300 million dollars a day. Some say it’s more like $700 million per day. That’s a lot of money we don’t have for health care, education and infrastructure. Thousands of lives lost and ten times as many scarred by physical and psychological wounds. The military has drained all the time out of it’s soldiers with its “stop loss” back door draft of not letting people out of the service. We can’t go to Darfur and stop the Genocide. If the military were really needed somewhere, who could go?
They see that an orthopedic surgeon looks at the world and sees a knee operation. The US has invested incredibly in its military for generations, having more military than the rest of the world combined. So it may be that the US looks at the world and sees a war, or at least a world to be threatened with war. Bush’s unilateral approach may have felt good to him and many others after the trauma of 9/11, but it doesn’t look so good now. Iraq is showing the limitations of relying on force. It was easy to overthrow Saddam but it’s not easy to occupy the country without insulting and terrorizing and sometimes torturing the people, and trying to use the other militias more than they use us. Mostly we have generated a lot of hate, which is going to come back and bite us some kind of way, probably many kinds. Neocons thought that a US invasion would result in a burst of democracy in the Middle East, and perhaps a resulting end to the ever festering Arab-Israeli conflict on terms favorable to the West. However you are not going to impose democracy with guns. Democracy comes from within. This is not a World War II situation where these countries have tried to conquer the world and been defeated for doing so. This was a war of choice. There is no Marshall plan in the offing any more than there was in Afghanistan.
The US invasion is more the problem than the solution. Probably the US needs to get out and the rest of the world go in, make and maintain a peace and, with our significant contribution, repair the damage that the US invasion has done. That will never happen as long as Bush is in charge.
And the general approach that war is the solution to all international problems needs to be abandoned. The world is more a community than it is Al Capone’s mob. At best violence is a last resort when all peaceful methods of resolving disputes about the division of wealth, power and respect have failed. I mean really the last resort. More likely, violence is always self defeating and self perpetuating, a cycle that must be broken. And where there are instances where violence must happen, there is an immediate need to invest heavily in repairing the physical and psychic damage that results.
Supposing we had 140,000 peacemakers in Iraq and a handful of soldiers instead of the other way round. There would be some risk and probably some death, but nothing like what is happening now.
T.Ruddick, If I had been president, I would have invaded Afghanistan and built up large forces there. I would have retained the option to unilaterally go after the Taliban and Al Queda; I would not have set up an Afghani government for some time; to the victor go the spoils. The spoils in this case would have been to hunt down Islamofascists wherever there were found in Afghanistan.
In Iraq, I would have gone in, removed Saddam, looked for WMD and finding none, I would have installed another Bath’ist leader. Women and religious minorities fared better under Saddam than under Shiite rule. After that, I would have withdrawn. Not pretty but realpolitik.